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When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism.
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Saturday, January 29, 2011

In response to the landmark Affordable Care Act, numerousright-wingstatelawmakers have introduced unconstitutional bills attempting to nullify this federal law. Earlier this week, however, the Virginia House of Delegates went even further, passing a sweeping nullification bill that directly conflicts with numerous Supreme Court decisions:

All goods produced or manufactured, whether commercially or privately, within the boundaries of the Commonwealth that are held, maintained, or retained within the boundaries of the Commonwealth shall not be deemed to have traveled in interstate commerce and shall not be subject to federal law, federal regulation, or the authority of the Congress of the United States under its constitutional power to regulate commerce.

It is all but certain that the Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Actunder its existing precedents, but this specific question has yet to reach the justices themselves. The Virginia House’s attempt to prevent the federal government from regulating locally produced goods, by contrast, is a direct assault on the judiciary. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress does not simply have the power to regulate commerce that crosses state lines, it also has the power to regulate wholly intrastate matters that “substantially affect interstate commerce.”

The Virginia Legislature has pulled this stunt before. In 1956, Virginia lawmakers objected to a different Supreme Court decision — Brown v. Board of Education. Rather than acknowledging that they are bound by the Constitution, however, these lawmakers instead enacted a “resolution of interposition” claiming that they were “duty bound” to defy the Supreme Court:

[W]e have watched with growing concern as the power delegated to the Congress to regulate commerce among the several States has been stretched into a power to control local enterprises remote from interstate commerce; we have witnessed with disquietude the advancing tendency to read into a power to lay taxes for the general welfare a power to confiscate the earnings of our people for purposes unrelated to the general welfare as we conceive it . . . .

Virginia can remain silent no longer. Recognizing, as this Assembly does, the prospect of incalculable harm to the public schools of this State and the disruption of the education of her children, Virginia is duty bound to interpose against these most serious consequences, and earnestly to challenge the usurped authority that would inflict them upon her citizens.